The Future of Artificial Intelligence

The future of Artificial Intelligence is now.

But the real question is how soon will we as a society be adapting to it?

We’ve already adapted to some form of it.

Many brands are manufacturing AI in the form of a “personal assistant”.

For example, Amazon’s Alexa can control many compatible devices (switches, outlets, etc.), she can tell the temperature and weather forecast, she can play any piece of music available on Amazon Prime, she can play an “A” (via a skill called The Pianist), and she’s the perfect oven timer.

You name it. The perfect help you need around the house or office. With a name like Alexa, it could be a little hard to forget there’s really no “she”.

For all that is lovable about Alexa, you have to learn how to ask specifically about things the system can access. While you use natural language to accomplish these requests, the trigger phrases don’t always come naturally.

The good news is that Alexa is evolving daily and the competition from Google Home will be good for everyone, including Siri, Cortana and every other well-funded NLP interface. In the very near future, we will talk to everything and everything will talk back. The issue at hand is whether or not we’ll be able to distinguish the differences in opinions. Does a software program have the right to deduce and assume?

The automated thinking is there. Next is the feel and look of human interaction that’ll take place in the next wave of AI. Mind you, it’s not as far out as you may think.

Don’t believe me? Watch the video down below.

One of the most critical examples about natural language programs and their prowess was the 2013 movie Her, which was about a man who falls in love with an NLP system, named Samantha. It seemed like a far-fetched scenario but it really doesn’t seem like too much science-fiction today.

How will we teach our children to differentiate between machines that sound and act like people, and other disembodied voices that are actual people? Will a child (or a grown-up) know when a customer service representative is a person or an NLP interface?